As if the news about the continuing tanking economy wasn't bad enough, this morning I'm getting an earful about the wars in Iraq and Aftghanistan. And none of it is good.
The NYT has a horrific story about how families are identifying their loved ones among the thousands of nameless dead in Iraq. A slide show of grief. As people read these stories of senseless deaths from the civil war in Iraq, their disgust with the region with increase.
People are already sick of this war. "An August poll by Associated Press-GfK shows that nearly 6 in 10
Americans oppose the Afghanistan war and only 38 percent support the
expanded effort there."
There are some doubts about how well Obama is dealing with being a War President. He's had a steep learning curve and domestic problems have been a priority.
The troops are returning home with mental illnesses and missing limbs.
Bob Herbert says that this war is stretching on, because other people's kids are doing the dirty work.
One of the reasons we’re in this state of nonstop warfare is the fact
that so few Americans have had any personal stake in the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. There is no draft and no direct financial hardship
resulting from the wars. So we keep shipping other people’s children off
to combat as if they were some sort of commodity, like coal or wheat,
with no real regard for the terrible price so many have to pay,
physically and psychologically.
Mike Crowley writes about the challenges that Obama will have to address in tonight's speech. "That may be because Afghanistan is looking increasingly like Obama's
Iraq — an unpopular war that the President must defend on
national-security grounds rejected by many Americans."
Apt. 11d 
My cousin is being deployed to Afghanistan in January. He has an almost-2 year-old. Of course, he is also 20. Not one for the good choices, my cousin.
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The problem with the Herbert theory is that the people whose children join the military (i.e., basically, working class and middle class kids from the South and Midwest, like the Palins) tend to be the biggest supporters of our various military ventures, whereas Northeasterners with graduate degrees (like me!), whose kids are highly unlikely to serve, are most likely to oppose those ventures.
The Herbert theory is based, ultimately, on the principle that people who disagree with you are stupid, uninformed, or hypocritical. That is not a true premise, and political discourse based on that premise tends to be unrewarding.
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“The problem with the Herbert theory is that the people whose children join the military (i.e., basically, working class and middle class kids from the South and Midwest, like the Palins) tend to be the biggest supporters of our various military ventures, whereas Northeasterners with graduate degrees (like me!), whose kids are highly unlikely to serve, are most likely to oppose those ventures.”
Right, my first reaction to that bit was, “What do you mean “we,” kemosabe?” My younger brother has done two tours in Iraq as a Marine reservist, just finished officer training, and is probably going to fly for the military. Without exaggeration, for a rural boy staying home in the US is much more dangerous than the military.
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for a rural boy staying home in the US is much more dangerous than the military
Amy is funnin with us again.
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“The Herbert theory is based, ultimately, on the principle that people who disagree with you are stupid, uninformed, or hypocritical.”
I wouldn’t call my aunt (mom of my military cousin) stupid. After all, we share genes. But she is the biggest well-meaning hypocrite ever. After my grandmother died when she was 17, she sort of got adopted by her husband’s family (her SIL was her BFF in HS), a very large (13 kids), very pro-life family (her MIL ran a Birthright center). And she got absorbed by the borg. My mom often wonders how she ended up this way–for all of my aunts, it mattered which guy they married. So far, my sisters are strong-willed enough to resist the husband-borg-ing. (I, of course, married a reasonable man.)
The only good thing is that my aunt knows damn well that we are all fairly confrontational about politics, so she’s never surprised or offended when one of us goes off on her.
Sorry to vent about family.
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“Amy is funnin with us again.”
I’m not kidding. I was looking at the brochure from my 10-year high school reunion and a shocking number of kids from a small class managed to die in the peace between the two Gulf Wars. I forget what the number was, but I mentioned it to my dad at the time, and he said that it was worse than his class’s rate of Vietnam casualties.
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Doug,
Don’t make me tell you about my classmate that got decapitated at a quarry the summer before our senior year of high school.
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typepad error. Two comments that I don’t want to get lost.
Ben Brumfield said:
I’ve seen Herbert’s position debated for about seven years now, and simply don’t think it matches the historical composition of the armed forces. With the exception of the Civil War and WWII, most American wars have been fought with other people’s kids — volunteers been disproportionately young people without better economic opportunities, from the Continental Army on. Furthermore, this also applies to times when the draft was in force, if you concentrate on who was doing the fighting vs. who was getting college deferrments or enrolling in the Texas Air Guard. The difference this time is that the credit expansion of the last four decades has eliminated the visceral feeling among voters that expenses must be paid for, and that payment will be unpleasant. What’s different about this war is that we’re fighting it with other people’s money.
Posted: Yesterday
Doug said:
I dunno about Crowley’s reasoning. Obama’s still cleaning up the mess that GWB left behind. Isn’t he? Really, though, after almost 10 years, it’s time to be doing something else. We didn’t get OBL’s head on a pike when we should have, but we did push that particular constellation of Taliban out of power. At the end of the day, though, it’s their country not ours. Speaking of countries (ours not theirs), making domestic issues a priority is a good thing. What “we” is Herbert talking about?
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I loathe the Herbert argument. It’s not historically accurate, and it’s such an arrogant definition of the term “we.” Yes, whether you encourage your child to consider a military career correlates with your degree of religiosity and your family income. But there are HUGE regional variations to that, and there are still plenty of kids in the Northeast who do ROTC or a military academy. There were three graduates of military academies selected as Rhodes scholars for 2010 (which is about average in the past decade), they came from New York, California, and Washington, and all three of them were women, too. There are six names on our (mainline denomination, liberal university-employee serving) church’s military prayer list at the moment, one of them a cousin of mine. I tend to think a draft would be a good idea, but not because of anything Herbert is writing. And btw, from a training and operational standpoint, does the military even want a draft? I thought it was considered hugely inefficient, taken all in all.
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I just walked by a truck in the college parking lot that had the back window plastered with various decals–Marine Corps Combat Veteran, etc. The vanity plate was “FALUJA.”
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